Finally, I found I was in the middle of reskinning my landing pad module. I have no idea whatsoever why the floor is white here; presumably that was something I was in the middle of working on. 'Twill be fixed in time, rest assured.

Heheh. Looks likes, and the name of the image implies that it's snowing. All you need to do is apply a bunch of snowcaps to the other objects and put up a christmas tree!

Heheh. Looks likes, and the name of the image implies that it's snowing. All you need to do is apply a bunch of snowcaps to the other objects and put up a christmas tree!

Thanks, twk. I think it's just a lighter floor texture that's showing slightly too brightly. I will be doing a proper snow texture for the floor and the rooftops later, though.

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Happy holidays.

twk

Same to you!

Small updates today. First, I've done some preliminary skinning on the Sword of Gith. It's by no means complete, and the hilt in particular needs a lot of work, but I reckon it's worth showing, nonetheless:

Also, I've replaced that floor texture with a new one on the Landing Pad. I will eventually replace both with a more snow-covered one, as well as putting more snow on the rooftops, etc, but for now, this will do:

And for the sake of comparison, a picture of how it used to look:
This one must be from about 2006, though annoyingly, Photobucket doesn't record upload details. It appears in a post from December 12th 2006 on page 1 of this thread (!), though, so it must be from around then. I like to think the new texture is quite an improvement, but perhaps my tastes have just changed.

Crits, suggestions and comments on both of these updates are, as always, more than welcome.

Finally, I leave you with some previews of the Exile's upcoming interpretive dance performance on Korriban:

(Is it just me, or does the guy in one of the pictures above have a bullseye on his privates?)

To the pure, all things are pure.

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Originally Posted by Quanon

Good looking sword model!

Thanks! Praise from the current model-master means a lot.

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NWN2 here I come again!

You really need to finish it and play MotB, Q...

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Whats with the snow? Is that Rhen Var on the surface.

Yes. It is, apparently, a snow planet.

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Good texture job, the concrete blocks/obstacles are really "crisp" looking.

Uh, those are default textures... but thanks anyway.

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Boy, you really need to release this someday

You're telling me?

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You're killing us little modders with anticipation!

You, a little modder?

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That should be a capital crime! You're such fiend DI

Young fool. Only now, at the end, do you understand.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sith Holocron

Regarding the snow topped mountains: is there a chance of a higher-res background?

To be quite honest, it's not something I consider a priority; If I'm still not sick of the whole thing on the other end of having implemented all the plot content I want in the game, as well as the various models and textures I've got in mind for it, then maybe I'll fiddle with terraingen to come up with a better background.

At present, though, like take-off and landing videos, it's very much a low priority, I'm afraid. That's not to say it won't happen; but it's not something I feel is essential for me to release the mod. In all honesty, it's probably a lower priority even than adding take-off and landing vids; difficulty is part of the reason (partly because I won't simply double up/mirror the current skybox textures), but it's also not something I think is particularly important.

I'd hope to keep you rather too busy to spend time staring at the sky, anyhow.

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Originally Posted by Canderis

Point and shoot my man, point and shoot.

Oh, that's just mean.

Fire at will.

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On topic- great work! Can't wait to see the next area!

Thanks! That might be a while, though; the next area in chronological sequence is quite large and involved. I may do a new area reskin sometime soon, though, of a less immediate area that nevertheless will be a fairly key feature on Rhen Var. So stay tuned!

Glad to see you're making so much progress on Rhen Var. Good reusage of the M4 Landing Pad module.

Thanks, though it's taken a fair while to get this far.

A piece of advice for all prospective and current storyline modders out there, by-the-by, which I can't stress enough: plan everything. If you leave it vague, when it comes to time to do it, you won't, or you'll come up with something on the spot which is sub-par. Learn from the mistakes of your predecessors.

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I agree with Sith Holocron on the background, mostly because it's a reuse of Telos, but for not it works quite well.

Well, to my knowledge almost all the textures in the area reappear elsewhere in the game, even if it's simply on M4; there are one or two which are my own tweaks, but for the most part it's just reuse, really. It'd be nice to scratch-build a skybox, but it's also the most difficult to pull off convincingly. While it'd be nice to have something 2048x2048, I'm not sure it's really necessary, to be honest, or something I feel capable of. You won't be spending huge periods of time on the landing pad, regardless, though you may be back and forth a bit.

Now, onto updates: my new computer is proving a little temperamental, so until I get it fixed, these may be less than regular. Nevertheless, a small update on the Sword of Gith. There aren't very many pictures of the thing online, and it seems that not many people have tried to model it, which I think is a bit of a pity; nevertheless, those that there are show little red jewels set into it, which I've been experimenting with.

I'm not very happy with how they've turned out, so any advice or feedback is welcome:

And since I seem to be including a random shot at the moment, here's a slightly random shot from TSL:

And because it's not Christmas yet and I'm old and prickly about things like that, and unhappy at all these people enjoying themselves...

Looking good; as I said earlier, the sword looks great, I'd add some more "grain" to the hilt, and possibly darken the blade. The red jewels, just at the moment look a bit like a random dot in the middle of the blade; the ones on the hilt work a lot better, I think - though you may want to make them bigger; functionally, I'd imagine having jewels in the blade, could cause it to be weaker anyway, so you may just want to remove them.

I've tried adding a bit more grain, but it doesn't seem to have made much difference, to be honest; I'm going to have a go at giving the hilt a more mottled look like the khopesh blade (q.v. post #146), which should make it look a bit less flat if all else fails.

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The red jewels, just at the moment look a bit like a random dot in the middle of the blade; the ones on the hilt work a lot better, I think - though you may want to make them bigger; functionally, I'd imagine having jewels in the blade, could cause it to be weaker anyway, so you may just want to remove them.

They did look a bit funny, yes. When I finally got a look at the weapon model in NWN2, it turned out there weren't any on the blade in the game, so it was just some rather misleading concept art making things more complicated. There are still more than a few on the hilt, though...

Five months later, and a lot later than I had planned, my computer seems to be fixed, and I've had a bit of time to do some work on Rhen Var. Not as much as I'd like, but still.

First, the Sword of Gith:

As I said above, fiddling with grain levels on the texture hasn't produced much of a discernable difference, but at least the blade looks less ridiculous without red dots all over it. I'm still not happy with the jewels on the hilt, but also not sure on how to move forward with them, so they may remain as they are for now. This weapon is frankly too fantasy-esque to go in Rhen Var, and is more of a side-project, so I'm a bit less concerned over it.

Next, I don't think I've posted any images of the jian model with its first-pass skin on it, so here's a brief shot:

I may need to fiddle with the model a bit more before it looks right, but it looks fairly OK for now, I think.

For the moment, the focus is on dialogue-writing and plot implementation, so updates may be fewer and further between for a while, at least. I don't want to give much away on the plot, and it doesn't really lend itself to screenshotting. Nevertheless, when I do have something visual to show, I'll be updating the thread.

Finally, another plot "spoiler" for the mod:
This screenshot does not affect your statutory rights.

As I said above, fiddling with grain levels on the texture hasn't produced much of a discernable difference, but at least the blade looks less ridiculous without red dots all over it. I'm still not happy with the jewels on the hilt, but also not sure on how to move forward with them, so they may remain as they are for now.

Perhaps if the jewels weren't circular? Four point diamond/star shape might work better as jewels. I don't know how large or detailed your texture is, but if the jewels were faceted, and didn't have the white shine right in the middle, it could look less like spots. Are the jewels modelled, or just on the texture? In photoshop, I like to use the pillow emboss, since a little shadow in the right places would make the jewel look set into the gold, rather than glued to the surface.

How well does the Jian model work with two hands on one sword? Otherwise, very nice.

Perhaps if the jewels weren't circular? Four point diamond/star shape might work better as jewels. I don't know how large or detailed your texture is, but if the jewels were faceted, and didn't have the white shine right in the middle, it could look less like spots. Are the jewels modelled, or just on the texture? In photoshop, I like to use the pillow emboss, since a little shadow in the right places would make the jewel look set into the gold, rather than glued to the surface.

Thanks for the tips! The jewel is just skinned on, which doesn't help it look less stuck on, of course. I've tried the model with a faceted jewel, but I'm not sure it works much better, and the original is (IIRC) round, so I'm not sure about it. The screenshot is below. I also got rid of the shine - it was fiddly to do in GIMP, anyway. On the pillow emboss, I don't know what that equates to in GIMP, so I've not managed to recreate that yet.

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Originally Posted by redrob

How well does the Jian model work with two hands on one sword? Otherwise, very nice.

It looks bearable, but not great. I didn't want to distort the handle and put the thing out of proportion in order to get the second hand in, though.

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Originally Posted by Quanon

Cool, a update from the greatmaster himself
Hopefully things go smoothly for you know.

No doubt its going to be an awesome story you planned out.
So... looking forward to that!

Thanks! I hope to release it soon, too.

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Originally Posted by Gargoyle King

Great to see your still working on this DI, that's real dedication - i can't wait to try out the finished product.

Thanks! I can't wait for you to try the finished product either.

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Originally Posted by logan23

Awesome update!

Keep up the great work!

Thanks, same to you!

It's been a month since the last update, and that's a lot longer than I'd planned, but that seems to be the general theme for the this thread, so it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise ( ).

A month ago, I was dialogue writing, and - guess what - I'm still dialogue writing. It's the one area you can't really rush - or rather, the one area you really shouldn't. Aside from typos and grammatical errors, it's the one thing that is easiest to do badly. Some professionals do it terribly.

Part of the reason that this isn't picked up on is because it's not a technical issue - it's an issue to do with writing, and people don't seem to pick up on writing much. Another part is that even a simple dialogue is deceptive - the amount of work in ensuring even that all the dialogue loops back to itself and contains all the detail requires is far more than the comparative gain.

At the moment, I'm keeping dialogue loops out of Rhen Var, so I've also got to come up with enough variations of the same parts of some conversations to make it worthwhile.

But as rule of thumb when writing dialogue, if you aren't finding it hard, you aren't doing it right. Because writing is - or should be - about constant improvement, and it's really, really unlikely you're that good. You may have heard of the trick that fiction-writers use for dialogue checking whereby they remove the character names and see if they can tell who is speaking. This is definitely something to try when writing dialogue.

I haven't been monomaniacal this past month, though...

As mentioned up-post, I've been playing with the jewel(s) on my Sword of Gith model, as per redrob's suggestions:

I may end up having to model these on, as I'm not entirely convinced, though.

Another thing I've been fiddling with is something I've been thinking about doing for a few years, but never quite bothered with. This started out life following something I saw excerpted from one of the KotOR comics, and thanks to Sharen Thrawn's skybox mod, I've been able to produce:

This isn't without its flaws, though:

This is a bit of an idle piece of work, though, as I can't really see the application of it. But I though it looked cool.

For KotOR 1, I've returned to an old project. The Tatooine Arena's last appearance in this thread (and last serious update!) was back in 2006, as can be seen on page 2, posts 60 & 62 of this thread. It's taken four years for me to get back around to it, but I've finally started doing something about this mod.

As can be seen, there's now a populated 'bar' area, as with swoop races and the Taris duel arena, as well as the actual duelling area. Other than that, work continues - most of the preliminary scripting is down, including the fight scripts, and it's now more a question of ensuring all the custom content goes in, although there's still a few niggling issues with the scripts I want to iron out first, mainly to do with death animations. The project is currently on milestone 3 of 5, and slightly less than halfway toward completion. I won't tempt fate and give a release date.

And I think that's just about everything I've got to report at this stage. Feedback, suggestions, tips, praise, condemnation, criticism, and lightsaber crystals all gratefully accepted.

I think the Jian looks great - one of my favorite sword models actually. As for the sword of Gith, are you planning on putting any shaders back on it? I can't really tell from the screenshots because in the largest picture it looks pretty plasticy, but in the picture on the top right it looks good.

And the Tatooine Arena would be a very welcome addition to my override. I've been looking for an excuse to play through kotor 1 again anyway. All in all, awesome work!

Hehehe... I thought you might have been working a little more than you were letting on

Nice all the way around, a pleasure to see new pics and a little behind-the-scenes. I am glad you state how important the value of well planned, written, and consistent dialog is to overall quality. It is, IMO, the most important part of an RPG game's mod. Without story, I'd rather go play TFU and hack'n'slash...

By the way, I was teasing you with something I mentioned via PM... and you never called me a fool for it! The Steam Chamber in the Sith Base is not a part of my diabolical plans

Thanks for the tips! The jewel is just skinned on, which doesn't help it look less stuck on, of course. I've tried the model with a faceted jewel, but I'm not sure it works much better, and the original is (IIRC) round, so I'm not sure about it. The screenshot is below. I also got rid of the shine - it was fiddly to do in GIMP, anyway. On the pillow emboss, I don't know what that equates to in GIMP, so I've not managed to recreate that yet.

With regards "Sword of Gith", not sure if it's been mentioned but you may wish to add some more texture to the blade, or consider the shade of silver that's currently used, it doesn't quite seem like metal to me atm. A further thought... Is it a brand new weapon, or an older one? If older perhaps some wear to the blade would improve it's appearance?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darth InSidious

It looks bearable, but not great. I didn't want to distort the handle and put the thing out of proportion in order to get the second hand in, though.

Looks good, I think the two handed look does just about work, although perhaps this particular sword may look best dual weilded. Regardless I DO really like this sword Again perhaps some investigation on the texture of the blade may provide extenuate the model more.

The cross of Atris academy and Sharen Thrawns skybox looks good... Obviously the blue screen would need to be removed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darth InSidious

A month ago, I was dialogue writing, and - guess what - I'm still dialogue writing. It's the one area you can't really rush - or rather, the one area you really shouldn't. Aside from typos and grammatical errors, it's the one thing that is easiest to do badly. Some professionals do it terribly.

Part of the reason that this isn't picked up on is because it's not a technical issue - it's an issue to do with writing, and people don't seem to pick up on writing much. Another part is that even a simple dialogue is deceptive - the amount of work in ensuring even that all the dialogue loops back to itself and contains all the detail requires is far more than the comparative gain.

At the moment, I'm keeping dialogue loops out of Rhen Var, so I've also got to come up with enough variations of the same parts of some conversations to make it worthwhile.

But as rule of thumb when writing dialogue, if you aren't finding it hard, you aren't doing it right. Because writing is - or should be - about constant improvement, and it's really, really unlikely you're that good. You may have heard of the trick that fiction-writers use for dialogue checking whereby they remove the character names and see if they can tell who is speaking. This is definitely something to try when writing dialogue.

Agreed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Darth InSidious

For KotOR 1, I've returned to an old project. The Tatooine Arena's last appearance in this thread (and last serious update!) was back in 2006, as can be seen on page 2, posts 60 & 62 of this thread. It's taken four years for me to get back around to it, but I've finally started doing something about this mod.

As can be seen, there's now a populated 'bar' area, as with swoop races and the Taris duel arena, as well as the actual duelling area. Other than that, work continues - most of the preliminary scripting is down, including the fight scripts, and it's now more a question of ensuring all the custom content goes in, although there's still a few niggling issues with the scripts I want to iron out first, mainly to do with death animations. The project is currently on milestone 3 of 5, and slightly less than halfway toward completion. I won't tempt fate and give a release date.

And I think that's just about everything I've got to report at this stage. Feedback, suggestions, tips, praise, condemnation, criticism, and lightsaber crystals all gratefully accepted.

Share and Enjoy!

Tatooine looks really good, you do any custom skins for those you fight in the arena?

I noticed last time I was on Telos polar plateau, the characters (Exile, Kreia, Atton) had visible frosty breath.
Maybe there is some way to replicate that in cold areas. I did some searches here on Lucas Forums and found nothing related.
Sorry for bugging you if this cannot be done, or if you already know about it.

On a more serious note: I'm looking forward to the eventual releases - especially of the Rhen Var stuff!

Thanks! I’m looking forward to it being done, too.

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Originally Posted by newbiemodder

great update DI..keep up the good work

Thank you!

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Originally Posted by Dak Drexl

I think the Jian looks great - one of my favorite sword models actually. As for the sword of Gith, are you planning on putting any shaders back on it? I can't really tell from the screenshots because in the largest picture it looks pretty plasticy, but in the picture on the top right it looks good.

It does have metal shaders on it, though those screenshots didn’t show that too well. Hopefully the screenshots in the release thread will show that better.

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And the Tatooine Arena would be a very welcome addition to my override. I've been looking for an excuse to play through kotor 1 again anyway. All in all, awesome work!

Thank you! Hopefully it’ll be fun to play through, too.

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Originally Posted by Quanon

Lovely, just lovely, its always great to see this thread pop-up

I can say the same about your WIP thread, too.

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Ca,'t say much more, but I'll just go a head and repeat myself:

Show spoiler

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AWESOME! BRILLIANT! GREAT!

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Christ, I need to install XP back, so I can continue with my own projects...

I see you got round to that. Now you just need to keep up the good work.

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Oh, do you have a certain method on how you start working on the dialogue-plot writing. How do you handle it?
Cause I've seen you talk about that in many threads. And I just wondered how the great arch-fiend, emperatous does it himself

Perhaps compile a list with usefull tips and such?

Er. Good question.

More seriously...

I usually start with a fairly basic idea. For Rhen Var, it started out with looking at Atris’ academy, and thinking “you could make an ice planet out of this...”, and remembering
Rhen Var’s role in that Gamecube game (can’t remember the name of it). In that game, you visited the tomb of Ulic Qel-Droma, too. So I started off by ripping off something else from another Star Wars game.

So: the high-point of the mod is going to the tomb. But you can’t make things that easy, because it’s just not satisfying for the player. There needs to be more happening on the planet. The tomb also makes for a good reason for the Exile to go there.
At first, I thought maybe there was an archaeological expedition, but when I checked,

Rhen Var is actually on (or near) the Perlemian Way (sp?), which is one of the major trade routes in the SW galaxy. So that gave me a place for the player to land, and a stage for the plot to play out on, before you get to the tomb. You needed to know where it was, and get access to a shuttle to get there.

Well, who is going to work at a trade outpost? The most important person will be the executive officer type person, followed by the local security officer. At first, my plot for the ‘outpost’ part of Rhen Var was that you would do a lot of tasks for different people, sort of like Dxun. But that’s really just filler, not a plot.

So... what if there was tension between the executive officer and the security chief? Now there’s potential for an interesting situation, but also for player choice to affect the plot. I don’t want to give too much away about Rhen Var’s plot, so I’ll leave it at that...

Once I have the rough outline of what the planet is about (Outpost-->Tomb), I work on its theme. Since TSL is all about themes, it seems best not to suddenly have them drop out like a rock.

Writing websites are probably better to go to than me for discussion of themes, TBH. I try and keep them related to the game’s own themes, too, to keep a sense of continuity.

By this stage I usually have various roles for characters to fill, sometimes including the actions they’ll need to take. Obviously, what they’re going to do informs their personalities and back-stories to some extent. Once I have a basic idea for what they do (a Dark Jedi, for example), I try and include some balancing characteristics, so they aren’t too one-dimensional (perhaps our Dark Jedi is motivated by anger we can relate to. Anger at slavery, for example. Or at the Republic’s inaction, or something.). And then I try to work out how they got to where they are now, psychologically as much as geographically. Most of that I probably won’t use in the game, but it helps me to picture how they’ll answer questions, or react to things, and what they’ll say and how they’ll say it.

As a rule, I prefer to make sure characters are more grey morally.
And that’s more or less how I plotted Rhen Var.
Rhen Var is really the only project I’ve (more-or-less) finished plotting to date, so I’m still working this out myself. I hope that’s helpful.

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Originally Posted by Qui-Gon Glenn

Hehehe... I thought you might have been working a little more than you were letting on

Well, I can’t leave a thread like this without some surprises.

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Nice all the way around, a pleasure to see new pics and a little behind-the-scenes. I am glad you state how important the value of well planned, written, and consistent dialog is to overall quality. It is, IMO, the most important part of an RPG game's mod. Without story, I'd rather go play TFU and hack'n'slash...

Thanks! I agree about hack’n’slash, and I think it’s also important to give the player some choices in how the plot plays out, too.

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By the way, I was teasing you with something I mentioned via PM... and you never called me a fool for it! The Steam Chamber in the Sith Base is not a part of my diabolical plans

D’oh! >_<

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Originally Posted by jonathan7

With regards "Sword of Gith", not sure if it's been mentioned but you may wish to add some more texture to the blade, or consider the shade of silver that's currently used, it doesn't quite seem like metal to me atm. A further thought... Is it a brand new weapon, or an older one? If older perhaps some wear to the blade would improve it's appearance?

It does have a texture, but KotOR/TSL seemingly only show texture variation if it’s made amazingly obvious to the eye. On the wear-and-tear, in NWN2 it seems to be magically new-looking (it even has sparkles which I couldn’t be bothered to model... ).

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Looks good, I think the two handed look does just about work, although perhaps this particular sword may look best dual weilded. Regardless I DO really like this sword Again perhaps some investigation on the texture of the blade may provide extenuate the model more.

Possibly. TBH, though, I just got sick of it in the end . Thanks for putting it up, btw.

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The cross of Atris academy and Sharen Thrawns skybox looks good... Obviously the blue screen would need to be removed.

Thanks! Yes, the blue thing would need moving. I’m not really sure what I’d use this module for, though. It looks pretty, but it’s a bit pointless, in truth. I suppose I could replace the game’s council scene... but that’s a fair amount of work for very little result, really.

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Tatooine looks really good, you do any custom skins for those you fight in the arena?

Thanks! I’m planning to do some custom skins, but I haven’t got to them, yet.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Schutta

To: Darth Insidious

I noticed last time I was on Telos polar plateau, the characters (Exile, Kreia, Atton) had visible frosty breath.
Maybe there is some way to replicate that in cold areas. I did some searches here on Lucas Forums and found nothing related.
Sorry for bugging you if this cannot be done, or if you already know about it.

Not a problem, and a good point; I hadn’t noticed that they weren’t breathing frostily, to be honest. I’ve begun looking into it, but I don’t have any clear solution yet. I’m currently looking into a possibility, though to be honest, it’s pretty low among the priorities for Rhen Var.

So... it’s been a while since my last post in this thread, and this is probably going to be my last post of the year here. Overall, it’s not been too bad a year – there have been several updates despite prolonged computer trouble, after all.

Rhen Var still isn’t complete, and to be honest, anyone yearning desperately would be better off giving up on the mod. It’ll be completed, but the one thing which is clear about it is that we’re in for the long haul with it.

That’s not to say, however, that I haven’t made progress. But in terms of implementing the plot, it’s slow-going. I’ve had to abandon my attempts to keep all repeated lines out of the mod, simply because there’s no way to keep that up and ever have any hope of getting it done. It’s moving forward, but very, very slowly.
With that said...

In terms of updates, I have a new sword using the jian model you all were so kind about. I could tell you a little about it, but I’ll leave the sword’s history and origin as a surprise :

The downside to revealing this I suppose is that it shows how cheaply I recycle bits from one texture to another.

More seriously, I haven’t yet decided how many of these weapons will be on sale on Rhen Var and how many will be in the hands of your enemies. But this Jian brings the number of melee weapons in the mod up to four, which is pretty good going.
There are also three very dodgy old lightsaber hilts as well, which I should remodel sometime, which would bring that up to seven. Whether that’s enough, I don’t know. I’ll see how many more weapon models I can find that are within my ability and aren’t going to look horrible. Most of the weapon model editing happens when I get sick of dialogue writing.

It’s still being UV-mapped, but this will probably be the weapon of choice for security guys on Rhen Var. My little joke, and maybe a spoiler, too . I don’t know if I can get it to fire quite like it did in the film, but I can say I intend for it to have green blaster bolts.

And finally, the Tatooine arena. As you can see, a fight is in progress. In terms of updates, this is more or less just an announcement that I now have (thanks to the ever-brilliant stoffe) a working OnDeath script for the arena. What this means is that instead of it being game over when you lose a fight, your character will “die”, a dialogue will play, and your PC will “wake up” back in the atrium area, just like in the Taris arena. If that sounds simple enough, it isn’t, at least because NWScript refuses to ever do what it’s asked to in a straightforward manner. I’m pretty sure this is what has in the main stopped more arena mods being made, so I’m pretty pleased with myself to have managed that, albeit with much invaluable assistance from stoffe.

I’ve also done a little research into the business of swoop upgrades. It’s interesting that neither game has the full set of requirements to make this work. TSL has the script function to bring up the screen, and the .2da with the relevant upgrades in it, and KotOR has the GUI elements for that screen. I’ve been trying to come up with replacement elements and slowly have been getting there, but large parts of the GUI seem to not be functional, and I have no idea yet whether the upgrades would have effect even if you implemented them. Much of the GUI clearly needed revising, in any case. No screenshots, I’m afraid, but I thought you’d all be interested in that.

You may note that there’s no Sword of Gith in this thread, and if you have, that’s because I finally released it (see TUCE). See, I do release things that appear in this thread... sometimes... . More seriously, I got so fed up with tweaking the texture that I decided to put the thing out there, as I don’t think I would have improved it much with it sitting about for another couple of months waiting to be updated.

My access to the internet is pretty erratic at the moment, and given the time of year it’s pretty difficult to ensure that you have the time to get online anyway, so I’ll take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year (assuming this post goes up before both of those... ).

Nevertheless, as always your feedback, criticism, comments, questions, quibbles and deposits of cadmium are gratefully accepted, and I hope to get back to you soon.

Itís still being UV-mapped, but this will probably be the weapon of choice for security guys on Rhen Var. My little joke, and maybe a spoiler, too . I donít know if I can get it to fire quite like it did in the film, but I can say I intend for it to have green blaster bolts.

Will you find it on Tatooine because that's certainly a "Sandman's" gun? Hopefully my life-clock won't run out before I find it.

Just so people know what you mean by "I donít know if I can get it to fire quite like it did in the film," I've attached a picture to illustrate the effect.

(That darn thing did shoot out green flame in real life.) I hope you can get the muzzle flashes to cooperate though!

Considering trying out (or returning to) SWTOR? You may as well go through my link and help get me some SWTOR referral points!

Will you find it on Tatooine because that's certainly a "Sandman's" gun? Hopefully my life-clock won't run out before I find it.

Actually, it's the security guards' weapon for Rhen Var.

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Just so people know what you mean by "I donít know if I can get it to fire quite like it did in the film," I've attached a picture to illustrate the effect.

(That darn thing did shoot out green flame in real life.) I hope you can get the muzzle flashes to cooperate though!

Yeah, I've tried this once already with no joy. I really need to try again. I'm not sure if you can create custom muzzleflashes, though. That would give the green fire, along with the proper shot colour.

Looks like Canderis beat me to pointing this out, but Coruscant is by deathdisco, and as much as I'd like to claim credit for his hard work, I can't.

As for TSLRCM, I don't know. I can't think that I'm modifying much that TSLRCM is, but if I am we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.

Now, I make it four months since my last update. There's certainly plenty to say about what's happened in that time, not least in my life, so I've got less done than perhaps I'd have liked to.

With that said, I now have the OnDeath and spawning scripts for the Tatooine Arena functioning. What this means is that (a) if you die in the arena, it isn't game over (though you will have lost the arena fight), and (b) most of the enemies spawn in the right way. There's still a certain amount to do before the arena functions properly - not least, dialogues like the duel organiser's to write, and a lot of small, repetitive scripts - but things are now a lot closer.

On Rhen Var, there's still nothing much to show, though I may soon (for a given value of 'soon', anyway ) have some new areas to show off; it all depends on how quickly I can finish up some other stuff, and how life pans out over the next few months, of course.

I have now skinned the gun model I was showing off above. i'm not entirely happy with the skin, but it's better than it might have been:

As I said above, this is the weapon of the security officers on Rhen Var, so you'll see it a fair amount. I've not decided yet whether it will be available, though. Maybe as a reward for a quest. Also, as I said above, I haven't yet done anything about the colour of the blaster shot, or, if possible, changing the muzzle flash to green, and moving it so that the weapon fires more like the one in Sith Holocron's screen-grab.

The skin will do for now; I'm not entirely happy with it, but with a small, black and shiny object there's not that much detail that will show through anyway.

And on a bit of modding unrelated to either of my 'main' projects, I have a bit of a failure I thought I'd share with you:
It was an attempt to make a robe like the one worn by Starkiller at the start of TFU2. Unfortunately, it didn't go too well, not least because there are very few screenshots online which gave good reference for the thing. It's also annoying that the arms are the wrong shape, annoyingly. I may return to this at a later date, possibly with another model, but thought people might like to see it, anyway.

Yeah, I've tried this once already with no joy. I really need to try again. I'm not sure if you can create custom muzzleflashes, though. That would give the green fire, along with the proper shot colour.

I've pointed out to Khrizby via e-mail that his input would be appreciated on this subject. Hopefully, he'll be dropping by to "drop some knowledge."

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Originally Posted by Darth InSidious

At present, though, like take-off and landing videos, it's very much a low priority, I'm afraid. That's not to say it won't happen; but it's not something I feel is essential for me to release the mod. In all honesty, it's probably a lower priority even than adding take-off and landing vids; difficulty is part of the reason (partly because I won't simply double up/mirror the current skybox textures), but it's also not something I think is particularly important.

As Stoney has experience with this very landing platform (with different skins, I'll grant you), he might be able to assist you with creating videos.

Regarding skyboxes . . .

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Originally Posted by Darth InSidious

I'd hope to keep you rather too busy to spend time staring at the sky, anyhow.

Fair enough!

Considering trying out (or returning to) SWTOR? You may as well go through my link and help get me some SWTOR referral points!

Thank you to both of you for the links. Thanks to these (and some massively helpful advice from the great SithSpecter), I've managed to get the gun firing with a custom muzzleflash and new ammo.

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For the sleeveless robe, you could try adjusting the shape of the model, as well as the uvw map.

That's true. The UV map might well need adjusting, since it apparently doesn't map both arms in the same direction, which is fine for a robe, but fo bare skin looks more than a little odd.

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Originally Posted by Qui-Gon Glenn

Huh!

The sleeveless robe ala Starkiller is actually quite cool, although I can see the annoyingly misshapen arms you describe... Quite annoying indeed

Glad to see your work continues, regardless of any time-frame!

Wow, thanks! I didn't think anyone would like it.

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Originally Posted by Sith Holocron

I've pointed out to Khrizby via e-mail that his input would be appreciated on this subject. Hopefully, he'll be dropping by to "drop some knowledge."

Awesome, thank you!

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As Stoney has experience with this very landing platform (with different skins, I'll grant you), he might be able to assist you with creating videos.

True, but Rhen Var is my 'lone wolf' mod. It's a bit silly, but I really want to do this one all on my own.

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Regarding skyboxes . . . Fair enough!

Actually, this may have changed a bit, depending on what areas I reskin. I may have one with a big window looking out, now, in which case I will definitely look into improving the skybox and maybe making a custom one. No promises on that, though; it might just end up with the skybox doubled-up, if I can't produce anything satisfactory.

I know it's a break with tradition to update more than once every three months outside of Advent, but I do have updates. Thanks to some massively helpful information from SithSpecter, I can show off the gun with a custom muzzleflash and new ammunition, too!

As you can see, I've also moved the muzzle flash into the chamber of the gun, to try and get a similar effect to the one in Logan's Run. It doesn't look quite the same, but I'm still quite pleased with the effect. The blaster shots are actually just a straightforward copy of the bowcaster's. They're the right colour, so I don't see the point of replacing them with identical, custom ones.

I'm not quite sure if I like the new muzzle-flash position; I might try and make a custom one closer to the green fire in the film. That depends on whether the muzzle flash model will decompile and import into gmax, though, and for now isn't high-priority.

I can also show off working beam-gun-effects! Or effect, anyway:

Again, with many thanks to SithSpecter. That was really just a test, though; the gun will fire green blaster bolts as above. However, I'm now thinking I really should include some beam weapons in the mod, too.

^^^ TB12, he and I are about equally ancient And yes, he predates me here, as he did at the other forum where we came to know each other, and that makes him (or me) no less old

Back on topic, DI, the right bicep and the left tricep is what I think you are referring to as the most problematic areas? It is odd that that one arm is obviously wacky in the front, whereas the other arm seems mostly to be wacky in the back.

The gun looks nice so far, the custom muzzle flash makes the gun very cool imo.

Thanks!

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I like the attempt at the Starkiller robes, with a bit of work I could see those being very popular.

I don't know. They're... OK. But I'd hesitate to say they're much more than a glorified robe recolouring.

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Originally Posted by Quanon

Awesome effects!!!

Thanks! Now all I need are the weapon models to give the effects to.

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Originally Posted by TimBob12

Loving it a lot. Can't wait to get this

Thanks! I can't wait to release it.

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Originally Posted by Qui-Gon Glenn

Excellent work on the new muzzle flair and bolt! It seems even an old dog can learn new tricks

We-ell... I'm not ready to take on modelling new areas, but I'm not totally past it, either.

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Originally Posted by Qui-Gon

(God I hope so, or I am screwed....)

Aren't we all?

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Originally Posted by TimBob12

Hes only been here 6 years... Don't beat the old guy down :P

Mmm? Where'd I leave my teeth?

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Originally Posted by Qui-Gon Glenn

^^^ TB12, he and I are about equally ancient And yes, he predates me here, as he did at the other forum where we came to know each other, and that makes him (or me) no less old

Once an '06 n00b, always an '06 noob.

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Back on topic, DI, the right bicep and the left tricep is what I think you are referring to as the most problematic areas? It is odd that that one arm is obviously wacky in the front, whereas the other arm seems mostly to be wacky in the back.

Yeah, the biceps look really odd. I think for some reason they're mapped the opposite ways round using the same bit of texture... But also, down near the wrist is very odd (where the robe narrows toward the gloves), and the elbow is also very funny-looking... It's also just that this isn't a very good reskin, to be honest. It barely counts as a reskin, at that - mostly it's just some recolouring.

Two small updatelets, and that's your lot for this weekend. First, I've done a little tweaking to the 'Starkiller'/medical robe:
First pass on making the boots black rather than desaturated grey. Not sure how successful these are, and I also can't decide whether or not to make them shiny, though my instinct is not.

Here's a couple of shots of pseudo-Starkiller in action (with lightsabers and Dark Jedi from T7Nowhere's lightsaber six-pack mod):

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Secondly, I appear to have forgotten to post my most recent discovery about TSL. Namely, I was fiddling a while back with the swoop upgrade screen, and replace several of the missing parts with existing bits and pieces. I should point out, I have no idea at all how to make this work with the swoop in the races, or indeed at all. This is just research. But here's the pic:

The three HK's are the three upgrade slots; I'm not quite sure what the box above them is meant to be; I think it contains the description of the items. The box on the right contains the item list, from what I remember. As you can see, the basic layout is there, but the whole thing is pretty buggy and incomplete. Whether or not it's restoreable, I have no idea.